We are pleased to share with you the news about the publication of a new book:
“I have the honor to convey…” The Semirechensk events of 1916 in the documents of the Vernensky search point. Collection of documents / Sanjarbek Daniyarov Foundation / [compiled, author. input and after. Schwartz] – Bishkek: Sanzharbek Daniyarov Foundation, 2024. – 704 pp., illus.
Th book is available in Russian
The collection for the first time brings together 323 documents related to the activities of the Search Point in the city of Verny and the Semirechensk region and its head, captain of the Separate Corps of Gendarmes V.F. Zheleznyakov in 1915-1917. Materials were identified in eight archives of four countries – Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Documentary sources cover the 1916 uprising in Semirechye, provoked by the Highest order to attract the foreign population of the Russian Empire for the construction of defensive structures, shed new light on these events. The introduction provides historical background, and the afterword provides an analytical review of published documents.
This is how the compiler of the collection, Vladimir Shvarts, characterizes the objectives of the book in the preface:
“A hundred years ago a paradoxical situation arose in historiography and continues to this day. On the one hand, it is no secret for professional historians that the archives contain an information array as vast as the ocean in the form of tens of thousands of archival documents on a historical event of paramount importance, and on the other hand, for decades researchers have been satisfied with the drops of information gradually flowing from this array . This phenomenon was more or less explainable as long as there were restrictions on access to archival funds. For more than a quarter of a century, the restrictions have been lifted, but articles and books about the events of 1916 are still based on documents published no later than the 60s of the 20th century. In fact, the entire history of the Semirechensk uprising was compiled from tracings of two Most Submissive reports – the Turkestan Governor-General A.N. Kuropatkina and v.i.d. Semirechensky Governor Colonel A.I. Alekseev, with minor adjustments based on the mentioned report by A.F. Kerensky.
The main characteristics of any major event – its causes, course and consequences – are presented strictly according to the three named publications. Historians use dozens of other documents only as sources of information for small touches in the picture painted by a general, colonel and State Duma deputy. At the same time, thousands of important and reliable evidence remain outside the attention of researchers. This state of affairs cannot be called anything other than mysterious and therefore requiring special analysis.
With this publication we make an attempt to overcome the existing stereotypes in the approach to the study of the Semirechensk uprising and thereby at least partially resolve this riddle.”
The collection is addressed to historians, teachers and a wide range of readers interested in the history of the Russian Empire during the First World War, dramatic events in the Turkestan region, in the territories of the modern Kyrgyz Republic and the southern part of the Republic of Kazakhstan, as well as the activities of units of the Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century.
HOW TO GET THE BOOK
We will try to distribute the book to bookstores in the near future; we will definitely inform our readers about this. In the meantime, if you want to read the book, please contact the fund number indicated in the “basement” of the web page. +996 707 783295 Asel Daniyarova: For correspondence, messages, photos only. Not for calls.
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